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Through his unique and abrasive style, Kim Ki-duk has become one of the few Korean directors to gain recognition in the Western film community. His films are considered extreme and challenging because of his lack of dialogue and indulgence in the underbelly of Korean society. One of Kim's most defining characteristics throughout his films is his unapologetic use of sexual violence. He has said that his films depict the true animal nature of humans. Sometimes it's ugly, sometimes it's beautiful, but Kim is looking to uncover the truth without much regard for his audience. He has been labeled a provocateur and has faced different challenges because of it, both in Korea as well as the rest of the world. Two films I think exemplify his style the most are The Isle (2000) and Moebius (2013). Through this page I will be looking at how sex and violence combine to be the backbone for his films throughout his career.

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The Isle is a film about a woman (Heejin) running a fishing resort where she supplies the customers with fishing supplies, food and drink, and even her own body. She becomes involved with a man on the run from the police.

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Another motif throughout Kim's films is the severe lack of dialogue with his main characters. However, it is important to make the distinction that these characters do not have an impairment. They are more than capable of speaking, they are just choosing not to. This is evident by one of the first scenes in The Isle. When Heejin is supplying her patrons one night, a man inquires to have sex with her for pay. She accepts but afterwards she refuses to humor the man verbally for a tip. He even says "I know that you can talk. You moaned while doing it." As she maintains her silence, the fisherman becomes irritated and throws the money into the lake for her to collect. Heejin then grabs the money and rows off in her boat.

Later, when that fisherman is out by the sea, she sneaks up on him in the water while he isn't looking and slashes his Achilles and drags him into the water. She then retreats to her boat a ways away and scowls at the man as he struggles. You get the idea pretty quickly that Heejin is not too pleased with her job and what it's drawn her to do.

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Heejin then becomes involved with a man who is on the run from the police and they form a toxic relationship. Through a quick dream sequence, it seems the man caught his wife having sex with another man and then killed them both. Heejin and the man's relationship fluctuates between the man giving Heejin gifts, the man raping Heejin multiple times and saving each other from suicide attempts. Their relationship becomes even more complicated when a younger woman starts visiting the man and he becomes attached to her as well. Heejin ends up kidnapping the young woman and abandons her on a far away island where she is left to die.

It’s a difficult relationship to gauge. Heejin clearly doesn’t get too much attention sexually that she actually wants and even then she is receiving little to no sentimental attention. The man gives her both but also abuses her and doesn’t remain faithful to her. Heejin has a hard time with this since she isn’t very used to it and her actions start to turn extreme.

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What the film has become most known for is the use of fish hooks in two of the suicide attempts by Heejin and the man. The first one is by the man when he sees the police coming to look for him. He puts several fish hooks down his throat and then pulls them out to kill himself. He comes close but Heejin arrives before the police do and hides him from them. Once the police leave, she helps him get the hooks out of his mouth and patch him up. However, she then proceeds to take his pants off and have sex with him. The most famous scene is when Heejin attempts a similar suicide. After the man rapes Heejin one night out of anger, she seems to have had enough of him and everything he has put her through. She proceeds to put several fish hooks into her vagina and then pull them out. The man arrives before she can kill herself as well and helps save her.

One can read into Heejin's suicide attempt quite heavily in many different ways (as is common with most things in Kim's films). You could say she was trying to destroy something that has caused her life nothing but suffering or you could look at it as a way of her punishing herself for the things she's done. It's also quite interesting because genital mutilation in film is something I've usually seen experienced by men (which will be evident later in Kim's career).

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After Kim came back from a three year hiatus (he was releasing at least one film a year for over 10 years) with Pieta in 2011, the film world thought he took his extreme style of cinema to another level and some even thought he went too far. Nobody could have guessed what he would end up doing next with his 2013 film Moebius. Moebius takes the Oedipal themes in Pieta and takes them much, much further. The film is also completely devoid of dialogue. Kim has had many characters not have dialogue in his films but he's never had every character not say a word. Moebius is one of the most ambitious and extreme films possibly ever made without actually being visually too explicit. Horrible things happen but very rarely do you actually see any of it happen explicitly.

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When he leaves the store he is ambushed by some kids who try to pull down his pants and make fun of him. Some older guys come in and rescue the boy. Then they all go back to the convenience store and the leader of the group starts groping the woman the son knows. When she slaps the leader away he gets mad and takes her to the back of the store and rapes her. They all then start taking turns raping her and tell the son to do the same. He refuses at first but they end up forcing him to go back there. He cautiously approaches her and pulls down his jeans a bit and starts humping her, making it seem like he is having sex with the women when he really isn't. The woman seems to realize what he is doing and her expression lightens slightly towards him.

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While I think that's a pretty interesting scene to think about, Kim complicates his own ideas very quickly. In the next scene, the woman seduces the leader of the group that raped her earlier but then cuts off his penis. The son comes in to help her and runs off with his penis (to transplant onto himself). The man chases after him and his penis ends up getting crushed by a car driving by. I found this scene a bit troubling because right after that impactful scene of the son and the woman sharing a sexual experience, they are immediately trying to get him back to the way he was. I can understand that nobody would want to stay that way, but it felt like it was too fast of a transition. Also the lack of dialogue doesn't help. Maybe they wanted to have an actual relationship after that or even wanted to have a baby. It leaves things in a very grey area.

From here the film gets incredibly convoluted and troubling (if I'm saying it's NOW getting convoluted and troubling, that should let you know just how insane the film is). The father ends up donating his penis to his son without the son knowing. The man who got his penis cut off by the woman and son comes back to the woman and tries to have a sexual experience like the son and the woman had. There's even more but I don't think I need to go into them at this point.

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Kim Ki-duk has been known as a trailblazing and controversial filmmaker since he started in the late 1990's, but his film Moebius truly tested what he was able to get away with. His film previous to this, Pieta, was the first South Korean film to receive the top award at one of the three big film festivals in the world and it seems that might have given him some extra confidence to pull Moebius off. While Pieta received great acclaim overseas, the Korean response was not as glamorous. Kim has said that international audiences don't seem to take his films as serious and the audience is usually laughing throughout. However, in South Korea the audiences reactions range from horrified to humiliated. It's quite interesting to see such a strong difference. Filmmaking as sexual and violent as Kim's aren't all that new to South Korea, it's actually something they've kind of become known for, so I find it fascinating that his films hit such a chord with his own people. He has always said he tries to show the true nature of the world through his films, so maybe he's tapping into something very close to the South Korean people or maybe they are simply not as amused by it as the rest of the world. Either way, Kim Ki-duk has continued to push the envelope of the representation of sexual violence in cinema and doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

The Isle. Dir. Ki-duk Kim. Perf. Suh Jung and Kim Yoo-suk. Myung Film Company Ltd., 2000. DVD.

Moebius. Dir. Ki-duk Kim. Perf. Jae-hyeon Jo, Yeong-ju Seo and Eun-woo Lee. Kim Ki-Duk Film, 2013. DVD.